Brazilian officials confirm that the remains found in the Amazon belong to the British journalist Dom Philips. At the same time, the police believe that more than the two suspects may have contributed to the killings.
Updated less than 20 minutes ago
–
Dental examinations carried out at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Brazil confirm that remains found in connection with the search for the British journalist Dom Phillips (57) and the indigenous expert Bruno Pereira (41), belong to Phillips.
According to sources in the federal police CNN Brazil.
A new DNA test will be performed to obtain a final confirmation.
Investigations into the remains of the other person, who is believed to be Pereira, are still ongoing, police said on Friday.
The search for the two lasted for eleven days before they were found on Wednesday. Then one of the brothers suspected of the murders showed the police the place where Philips and Pereira were buried.
Both the two brothers must have confessed to the killings.
“They were killed to support the conservation of the rainforest and the indigenous people there,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.
Price also offered condolences to the families of the two men and said that
–Phillips and Pereira disappeared on June 5 after a four-day reportage trip in the Javari area of the Amazon. They were there to visit indigenous communities in the far west of the Amazon, near the border with Peru.
They were buried in a densely forested area, about two hours from the nearest village, according to The Guardian.
Investigators are continuing to work on the remains, both for final identification and to determine the cause of death.
Police said earlier Friday that the killings of the two, who police believe were committed by two arrested men, were not carried out on behalf of anyone else.
“The investigation suggests that the killers acted alone, without any culprit or criminal organization behind them,” the federal police in the Amazon region said in a statement.
Nevertheless, officials also said that there are indications that other people participated in the criminal act and that it was possible that more people would be arrested.
But the police statement is met with skepticism from the indigenous group Univaja that Pereira worked with, writes The Guardian.
The group was too essential in the search for the two men.
–In recent months, Univaja has sent several reports to the police that criminal gangs were active in the area, and the indigenous group claims that some of these gangs also had a connection to the two suspected and arrested men.
“The cruelty of the criminal act shows that Pereira and Phillips got in the way of a powerful criminal organization that did everything in its power to cover its tracks during the investigation,” Univaja said in a statement.
– This context shows that there were not just two executions, but an organized group that planned every little detail of the crime, the statement continued.
Authorities say one of the main culprits in the investigation has identified an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish in Vale do Javari, which is illegal since the area is reserved for indigenous peoples in Brazil.
According to The Guardian, Pereira and Phillips’ boat was cut off by the killers on their way back to the village of Atalaia do Norte after the four-day reportage trip.
–
